Lynn T. Kozlowski, PhD, of the School of Public Health and Health Professionals at the University of Buffalo has said that vaping and smoking trends do not suggest that vaping leads to smoking.

“There is little evidence that those who have never smoked cigarettes or never used other tobacco products and first try e-cigarettes will later move on to cigarette usage with great frequency or daily, regular smoking.”

“The aggregate risk implied by [these] studies is very small. Further — and we consider this very important — the data from large national cross-sectional studies provide no evidence that kids’ use of e-cigarettes is increasing smoking. If anything, those data suggest the opposite,” added Kozlowski, wring with Kenneth E. Warner, PhD, from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.

Not only do the pair say that adolescent e-cig use may not lead to cigarette use, but believe that health officials and lawmakers must properly assess the financial ups and downs of retaining e-cigs in their current form as a cessation tool against costs that could insure from people who make the transition from e-cigarettes to traditional tobacco.

“We need to appreciate that growing antismoking sentiment, accompanied and reinforced by more stringent tobacco control policies, is likely to increase the ranks of former smokers in the coming decades,” Kozlowski and Warner wrote. “With smoking cessation rates up in recent years, the odds that a youth who begins smoking now remains a smoker 30 years from now are likely to decline substantially.”